- Year 2018
- NSF Noyce Award # 1540780
- First Name Jeanne
- Last Name Weiler
- Discipline Other: All sciences
- Co-PI(s)
Dennis Robbins
, Hunter College
, drobb@hunter.cuny.edu - Presenters
Dennis Robbins, Hunter College, drobb@hunter.cuny.edu
Jeanne Weiler, Hunter College, jweiler@hunter.cuny.edu
Karina Baculima, Hunter College
Stephanie Diaz, Hunter College
Need
The Hunter College Noyce Science Scholars Program at Hunter College, Phase 2, recruits, prepares and supports new and diverse science teachers. We have created a one-week Summer Robotics Institute to train 14 current Noyce Undergraduate Scholars to teach robotics to middle school students during a two-week Robotics summer camp at the College. Research from our Phase I project showed that Scholars overwhelmingly believed their early exposure to working with young students in informal summer program environments provided them with greater confidence and skills when engaging in their required pre-student teaching fieldwork in their formal education program.
Goals
One of the primary goals of our Noyce Phase 2 project is to prepare our pre-service science teachers with the understandings and skills in the innovative uses of various hands-on technologies (e.g., robotics, probeware, iPad apps, etc.) to support learning of mathematics, scientific reasoning, engineering principles and computer programming in the high school classroom. Overall, the Robotics curriculum has the explicit goal of exciting and engaging students in STEM related fields via interactive robotics.
Approach
Though hands-on workshops during a week-long summer institute held in June, Noyce Scholars are prepared to teach a STEM curriculum using LEGO® Mindstorms® robotic vehicles. Scholars learn a designed curriculum and appropriate teaching methods are modeled. Educational robotics has wide presence in New York City schools and scholars assume highly-needed summer teaching experiences at the two-week Hunter College STEM/Robotics camp for middle school students as one of their first teaching experiences before their mandated student-teaching.
Outcomes
Scholars are surveyed prior to and at the conclusion of their participation in the week-long Robotics Institute and again at the conclusion of their teaching experience in the two-week summer STEM/Robotics camp. For the purposes of this poster we focus only on Scholar beliefs and experiences in the Robotics Institute. We present data on the Scholars’ initial beliefs about teaching robotics, their beliefs about the efficacy of using robotics to teach scientific concepts, their sense of preparedness in implementing the robotics curriculum after receiving training, and the degree of their enthusiasm in learning robotics as a teaching tool. This summer we are piloting our first STEM/Robotics camp for middle school students and are eager to understand Scholars’ experiences in learning the robotics curriculum, the extent to which Scholars feel prepared to teach the curriculum, and its implementation in the camp.
Broader Impacts
The Robotics strand of our technology initiative within the Noyce Phase 2 grant focuses on preparing our undergraduate pre-service science teacher Scholars in inquiry-based science pedagogy aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards that represents the best efforts in improving the engagement and achievement of urban students.
